But despite that, she said, “I’m absolutely sure of it. I don’t blame anybody for being worried or upset, but you have to have faith.”
Peter Stansfield said, “You’ll have to pardon me, Miss Jensen, but I’m a reporter. That means I’m naturally cynical. I think you know our odds of survival are just about nonexistent, but you don’t want to say that. Am I right?”
“If you were, I wouldn’t admit it, would I? Just keep your mouth shut, save your energy, and try to stay warm.” Denny looked around at the circle of anxious faces. “That last part is good advice for all of us.”
She tried not to glare at Frank Colbert, but judging by the smirk on his face, he knew she was blaming him for what had happened and didn’t give a damn. Alma Lewiston huddled against the outlaw’s side as they tried to share what little body heat they had left.
Salty hunkered next to the fire and fed a small branch into the flames. “I hate to say it, Miss Denny, but we’re gonna have to have some more firewood pretty soon.”
Denny grimaced. She had just gotten warm . . . well, a little less cold, anyway . . . and now she would have to go back out and search for firewood. But she could tell that the others were all looking to her for leadership with Smoke gone, and with that came responsibility.
The worst part was, she had looked around outside while she was gathering the first pile of broken branches, and she didn’t think there were many more to be found nearby. When the wagon road and then the railroad had come through Donner Pass, most of the trees had been cleared away.
“I’ll go see what I can find,” she said.
Brad sat up right away and said, “I’ll come with you and help.”
Melanie’s arm tightened around his shoulders. “No! I mean . . .” She looked embarrassed. “I mean, Denny will have enough to do without keeping up with you, too, Brad.”
“I can take care of myself,” the boy insisted. “Nobody has to keep up with me.”
Louis said, “You know that’s not how it works. Denny, I can help you.”
“There’s no need for anybody to help me,” she said sharply. “All of you just stay in here and keep as warm as you can. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Don’t go out of sight o’ the coach,” Salty warned.
“I don’t intend to.”
Denny crawled out of the lean-to, stood up, and brushed off the snow she had gotten on her. She looked around. No trees were in sight, but she thought she remembered where she had found most of the branches earlier. She headed for that spot and began rooting around in the snow.
She found half a dozen small branches and knocked the snow off of them. That was all she came up with. Those would help for a while but wouldn’t last the night, when the temperature would drop even more . . . to killing levels of cold.
She took the branches back to the shelter and handed them in to Salty. “I’m going to look around some more,” she told the old-timer through chattering teeth.
“Dadgum it, you come on back in here and warm up,” Salty said. “We can hunt more firewood later.”
Denny wanted to argue but was too cold to do so. Also, she was having to fight off an insistent feeling of despair. She knew Smoke wouldn’t want her to ever give up hope, but sometimes maintaining it took a real effort.
As she settled down at the fire, sitting cross-legged on the ground between Brad and Salty, she said, “We may have to find other things to burn. The coach is blocking the wind, so I don’t want to destroy it, but there might be parts of it we could break off and burn. We might find some things in our bags that would work as fuel, too.” She gestured toward the case in Kellerman’s lap. “All those business papers you’re carrying around would make good tinder, Mr. Kellerman.”
The man’s eyes widened as he held the case to his chest. “These . . . these papers are irreplaceable, young lady. You can’t burn them!”
“If it comes down to a choice between doing that and freezing to death, we dang sure will,” Denny replied in a firm voice. Salty felt like he had been left in charge, but Denny knew that Smoke was actually counting on her to get them all through this ordeal safely. If that meant giving orders and imposing her will on the others, she was prepared to do it.
Kellerman just glared at her and clutched the case. Denny noticed how intently Frank Colbert was looking at the banker. Colbert was suspicious, and that made Denny suspicious.
Maybe what Kellerman had in the case that he considered so precious wasn’t just a bunch of bank documents. Maybe it was something more valuable.
Although trapped out here in the middle of nowhere, in a blizzard, nothing had much value unless it could be burned for warmth to keep them alive.
Denny hoped help would arrive in time, and they wouldn’t need to open Kellerman’s case and use whatever was inside for fuel.
But if that time came, she would be mighty glad that she had a Colt on her hip and knew how to use it.
CHAPTER 35
The red flicker of flames was the first thing Smoke was aware of as consciousness seeped back into his brain. Immediately following that came a thundering ache that filled his skull. As seconds crept past like hours, he gradually became aware that he was hearing and feeling his pulse.
That realization told him he was alive . . . and a moment later he also realized that he was warm. Both of those things seemed unlikely but were true.
As his thoughts cleared, he figured out that he was lying on some hard surface. Cautiously, he moved one finger enough to tell that it was a rock floor of some sort. Until he knew more about where he was and what the circumstances were, he didn’t want to announce that he was awake again.
So he kept his breathing deep and regular and didn’t move or open his eyes. He just lay there and let his other senses do the work.
The smell was the next thing he noticed. Rank, like that of a wild animal. If not for the fact that he could see a fire through his closed eyelids, he might think he had been dragged into some predator’s den.
No animal could build a fire, though. That required the human touch. And as Smoke listened, he heard an odd sound that he finally figured out was someone grunting and muttering to themselves.
The Donner Devil. Salty had seen something that appeared unnatural, and so had Smoke. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t too far-fetched to believe that some sort of strange creature roamed this isolated pass, but the fire made Smoke believe it was a man, not an animal.
Or maybe . . . it had been a man.
He was going to have to take a chance eventually, and he felt stronger now. His wits had returned to him, and the pain in his head had subsided to a dull ache. The other members of his party were still in danger, so he couldn’t afford to wait too long.
He opened his eyes; pressed his left hand against the hard, rocky surface underneath him; and pushed himself into a sitting position. His right hand slid under his coat in search of his gun, but he didn’t find it.
The muttering got louder and sounded alarmed. It came from Smoke’s left. He turned his head in that direction and the glare from a small fire made him grimace and squint after so long in the darkness of oblivion. But his eyes adjusted quickly and he saw a huge shape on the other side of the flames.
The scene was a lot to take in. Smoke had seen some strange things in his life, but few stranger than the giant of a man who stood across the fire from him in a cave with a rounded ceiling over their heads. The man was close to seven feet tall, with a wild mane of gray hair and a long beard that covered nearly all of his face. Smoke could barely make out the eyes and nose in all that growth, and he couldn’t see the man’s mouth at all.
The man was wrapped in some sort of fur garment, obviously crudely fashioned from animal pelts, probably bear and wolf. His feet were wrapped in fur as well. It was easy for Smoke to see how he could have been mistaken for a bear or a giant wolf.
But the stranger was a man, no doubt about that. The eyes told the story.
Smoke suspected that mad
ness lurked in them.
But the man didn’t sound loco as he rasped, “Don’t . . . don’t hurt me. Please.”
His voice was rusty, as if it hadn’t been used much for many years. Unarmed as he appeared to be, Smoke wasn’t sure he was capable of hurting a giant like this, especially given the condition he himself was in, but the man’s fear seemed genuine. Smoke sat up straighter, held out an empty hand, and said, “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
The man had backed all the way to the far wall. He wasn’t particularly burly, but the muscles were like clumps of rope. Smoke knew from the way the man had picked up the wolf and flung it against a tree that he possessed enormous strength.
The idea that this strange individual might not be the one who had saved him from the wolf never occurred to Smoke. For there to be two such creatures lurking around Donner Pass was just too much of a stretch for him to believe.
While the man watched him warily, Smoke looked around the cave. It was roughly circular, about twenty feet in diameter, and the arched ceiling twelve feet high at the most. Animal skins were scattered here and there, as were bones. Clearly, the man subsisted on what he could catch, but he didn’t appear to have any traps or weapons. He made do with what he could run down and grab with his bare hands. No wonder there wasn’t any extra fat on him.
A low tunnel led out one side of the cave. The opening was no more than three feet tall, so Smoke would have to crawl out through it when he left. Certainly, that was the only way his “host” could get through it.
Since the man understood English, Smoke figured it was time to communicate more with him. He put his hand against his chest and said, “Smoke Jensen.” Then he asked, “What’s your name?”
The giant made a sound like “Urrrr.” Smoke couldn’t tell if he was growling or trying to form some word.
“Smoke,” he said again as he lightly tapped his chest. “I want to be friends with you. Can you tell me your name?”
The man looked back and forth quickly, then down at the floor of the cave. Without raising his eyes, he said again, “Urrr.”
He was embarrassed about something, Smoke realized. A possibility occurred to him, and he said, “Are you trying to tell me your name is Earl?”
Still without raising his head or meeting Smoke’s eyes, the giant nodded.
“I’m pleased to meet you, Earl,” Smoke said, keeping his voice calm and steady. “You’re the one who saved me from that wolf, aren’t you?”
“Don’t like . . . wolves.” The voice rasped like a corroded hinge. “They take my food . . . chase me.”
“I don’t like them when they attack me, either. Thank you for helping me.”
Earl ducked his head even more.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” Smoke said. “Like I told you, I won’t hurt you.” He was anxious to find out where he was and how much time had passed, but he sensed that rushing things with this eccentric giant could be disastrous. “Why won’t you look at me?”
“Not fit.”
“I’m not fit?”
Earl shook his head emphatically and pressed a closed, knobby fist against his chest. “Not fit . . . to be around people. Ashamed . . . so ashamed.”
“Why? What have you done to be so ashamed of?”
“When the wagon train stopped . . . people got so cold . . . so hungry . . . I was so hungry . . . just a boy. . . .”
A stunning theory burst in Smoke’s brain. He couldn’t stop himself from exclaiming, “Were you one of the Donner Party?”
He knew the words were a mistake as soon as they were out of his mouth. Earl cringed like a whipped dog, bent down to hunker at the base of the wall, and turned away. Smoke saw his shoulders shaking with sobs.
“Earl, it’s all right,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t know anybody was left around here from that bunch. That would make you . . . what? Sixty or seventy years old?”
The giant didn’t look that old, and the thought that someone of such advanced years could pick up a full-grown wolf and throw it through the air like a rag doll seemed beyond belief.
On the other hand, trying to survive alone in the wilderness would either kill a man . . . or hone away all the civilized weaknesses and harden him to the point that almost anything was possible. If he’d been a youngster when the Donner Party became trapped on the other side of the pass and had spent the past five and a half decades alone, ashamed of what he had done, the effects on his mind and body would be difficult to predict.
Such an ordeal might well result in the gigantic creature who crouched before him, Smoke mused.
He was a little surprised, though, that Earl could still speak after so many years of solitude. That thought led him to another question.
“Have you been by yourself all this time, Earl?”
At first he thought the giant wasn’t going to answer, but then, as if every word had to be dragged out of him, Earl said, “My pa was with me . . . for a while.... He told me . . . we couldn’t ever go back . . . around civilized folks again.... Said we weren’t fittin’. . . . Said we weren’t nothin’ but . . . animals.”
Anger welled up inside Smoke. He had a better picture now of what had happened. One of the survivors from the Donner Party, instead of going back to civilization after the spring thaw, had decided to remain in the mountains because he was ashamed of what he had done to survive. He had had his young son with him, and over the years of isolation, he had taught the boy to feel the same sort of crippling shame.
There was no telling how long ago the older man had died. Probably many, many years had passed since then. But at least Earl had had some human companionship for part of the exile his father had imposed upon him.
“I don’t think you’re an animal, Earl,” Smoke said. “Why don’t you come over here and sit down closer to the fire? That rock wall you’re leaning against has to be pretty cold in weather like this.”
Earl took a step, stopped, moved his fur-shod foot back where it had been. He lifted huge hands and raked his fingers through the long, tangled hair on his head. As he muttered something that Smoke couldn’t understand, he started shaking his head.
After a moment, Smoke began to understand the words. Earl was saying over and over again, “Shouldn’t have brought him here . . . shouldn’t have brought him here.”
“Why did you bring me here, Earl?” Smoke asked. “Why did you knock me out?”
Earl finally looked up again. He said plaintively, “You scared me. I heard you shooting. You came to hunt me, the way other men have hunted me in the past.”
His voice had loosened up some while he was talking. He seemed to be getting more used to putting words together in sentences. Smoke didn’t want to lose that bit of progress.
“I would never hunt you or try to hurt you, Earl.” He kept using the name to remind the giant of his humanity. “Other people may have done that, but not me. I try to help folks, not hurt them.”
Earl shook his head. “You can’t help me. I’m damned.”
Again Smoke felt anger toward the man responsible for this, Earl’s father. Allowing his shame and guilt to ruin the rest of his own life was one thing, but to put his son through a lifetime of self-torture and being alone . . . that was a terrible legacy.
Smoke got to his feet. Earl cringed again, which was ludicrous considering his size and strength.
“Listen to me, Earl,” Smoke said firmly. “There’s no need for you to be ashamed or to hide in the mountains like this. What happened was a long, long time ago, and nobody is mad about it anymore. Nobody blames you for what happened. You can live the rest of your life around people and try to find some happiness. I’ll help you. I give you my word on that. I just want to be your friend.”
And to get your help in rescuing the others, he thought as he stuck his hand out toward the giant. Earl had to know this area better than anyone else, having lived in it for so long. More than likely, he could find his way around even in a
blizzard.
Earl stared at Smoke’s hand as if he wanted to step forward and take it, but he couldn’t summon up the courage to do so. Finally, after a couple more false starts, he moved closer to the fire and stretched out his right arm. His big paw closed around Smoke’s hand. He clasped it just for a second, but that was long enough to seal the connection between them.
To emphasize that, Smoke said, “We’re friends now, Earl. I’ll help you any way I can. And I hope you’ll help me, too.”
Earl frowned, or at least Smoke thought he did. It was hard to be sure with so much hair hanging over the giant’s face.
“How can I . . . help anybody?”
“Do you know where the Summit Hotel is?”
Earl flinched visibly. “The big building, next to the steel rails?”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t like it! Too big. Too many people during the summer! They should all go away and leave Earl alone!”
Smoke didn’t want to make Earl pull away from him so soon after he had accepted their fledgling friendship, but he had no choice. He had pushed his worry about Denny, Louis, Salty, and the others to the back of his mind while he was trying to establish some sort of rapport with the giant, but now he had to start nudging Earl into helping him.
“I have other friends who’ve been stranded here in the pass by the blizzard, Earl, and they need help. I need to get all of them to the hotel where they’ll be warm and safe, but I can’t do it by myself. I’m not sure I can even find them again as long as it’s snowing. But I’ll bet you know the way.”
Earl shook his head. “Can’t go to the hotel!” he said. “People there will shoot at me, because they know I’m bad!”
“I told you, Earl, nobody is mad at you. Nobody will shoot at you. I’m your friend, and I won’t let them. Just help me, and you’ll see. Everything will be all right.”
“Can’t.” Earl wouldn’t meet Smoke’s eyes again. His head drooped and he looked at the ground. “Can’t go around other people.”
A High Sierra Christmas Page 27